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Hi there!

This week was a welcome change for some of us: We did audio recording with FX for many important parts of the game. On Monday, we did a session of voice acting with a friend of ours, Maxime Carignan-Chagnon. He proved us that he was the best choice for the voices of the Bricktrons. The recording was constantly in danger of being interrupted by uncontrolled laughter from the rest of us listening and recording. I daresay we have a good hour of dialog and once we filter through to the good stuff, we should have more than enough material to last us until the beta.

And then Tuesday, FX and I left with two of his friends, Sylvain Jannot and Mathieu Lavoie to do a field recording session. An hour and a half south of Montréal, we stopped at Mathieu’s brother’s summer house. The perfect location: far from the ambient noise of Montréal, plenty of space and an infinite source of things to smash and throw around.

The process is both as simple and as complicated as you can imagine. The art, of Foley recording consists of taking any kind of object you can imagine to re-create sounds you need in a film/game in a controlled environment. The process involves as lot of imagination and creativity because you often don’t have access to specific objects needed. In other cases, the real-life objects (a sword for example) might not even sound the way you’d like to. Cinema often cheats with sound effects in order to make the movie sound larger than life.

Let’s say you’d like the sound of ice cracking. You could encounter a myriad of problems like we did. The ice on the lake next to the chalet was too thick to break, and when we went to the thinner edges, the sound was polluted with squishing sounds of water sloshing around. We wanted a dry cracking noise. The solution? We found a board of Styrofoam, broke off some pieces, and twisted them in our fingers, it gave us the creaking and popping we were looking for. Next we used an ice pack, like this one, and rubbed the frozen cells together to get that unique sound ice makes when you knock it on something.

This is us trying to break the ice and failing horribly.

On the good side, FX captured this epic picture!

Soundtrack of the week

Another favorite and already featured band of mine. Pretty chill altogether. The Path, by Carbon Based Lifefroms.

Team Sauropod

37 Comments for Dev diary number thirty four : Fieldtrip

Justin Fitzpatrick

2 yearss ago

Sounds like you had some fun with that ice ;) hahaha, keep it up :D

Wizz

2 yearss ago

Hey its time for the beta right ;D or at least an update for the prototyp…I cant wait to smash some evil coruptrons!

Michael

2 yearss ago

WARNING: I’m going to be critical.

Recording custom sound effects sounds like a huge waste of time and money to me. Just use stock effects and move on! They’re not going to make or break the game, they just need to be “good enough”. Focus on your strengths and just buy the rest. It will save you a lot of frustration and probably give you a better result.

2 yearss ago

Alex

2 yearss ago

I suppose, but where is the fun in taking someone else’s work and tolerating it? while I will agree with you that there are much more pressing issues at hand, I am forced also to remember that time away from a project can really pay off when they return with a fresh mind.

dawid

2 yearss ago

well, the guys need some distraction to gather some energy, i guess. big projects can get tiring and exhausting after a while ;)
it shows in the continuous shifting of the blog posts. i’m waiting till it reaches friday again ^^

nevertheless:
i love your project and your ambitions. i’m checking your progress weekly since your first trailer. keep up the good work!

Zeph Grey

2 yearss ago

These guys made way more than they were asking for on their Kickstarter. They should absolutely use it to make custom sound effects just the way they want them. Plus it sounds like fun. It does however make me wonder how Ice will be used in the final game.

Halosnake

2 yearss ago

Good sound effect is going to help you guys in the long run!
On another note do you have a prox when the beta is comming =P

Vino

2 yearss ago

FYI you can get a pretty good ice cracking sound with a regular ice tray full of ice. The first time you twist it, it sounds great.

Space Narwhal Replacement

2 yearss ago

Yay!.

HappyMan

2 yearss ago

How is network man doing?

Has there been a decision on how many players can be in a game?

Also, will players be able to enter a game already in progress?

2 yearss ago

He is doing fine. Right now he is still experimenting on our program. The game’s structure is not ready for multiplayer yet so no final decisions for now. Don’t worry, when it works, we will announce it.

Michael

2 yearss ago

Could we please get a sample of the Brickton’s!!?? Just a little taste?

jetewabbie

2 yearss ago

Having lots of fun with the prototype. Cant wait for water,ice and more sound. Do you have a list yet of what to expect to be added to the beta?

StranaMente

2 yearss ago

I know you have more interesting/pressing things to do, but I’ve noticed that the RSS for the blog isn’t recognized correctly by firefox. Any clue?

Daminos

2 yearss ago

My money when will i be able to give it to you i want this game. I’d ask for a video every day but you would get nothing done. I’d rather it be like over growth and take 4 years but be perfect and amazing rather then a meh game that was rushed.

P.S. if i wasn’t poor during the kick-starter i’d be playing the prototype right now, Cheers and Good Luck!

Sincerely,
A Huge Fan

Irate Fox

2 yearss ago

That looks like the nicest Foley stage ever! Needs a mug of tea/coffee/hot chocolate too, though.

Can’t wait for the game to come out! :D

TheCF

2 yearss ago

Hmm… does this mean that all the bricktrons will be speaking in not only really funny voices, but really funny voices with french accent?